On Fox News' America's Election HQ, radio host Tammy Bruce suggested that Sen. Hillary Clinton suffers from "mythomania ... part of a larger psychiatric scheme of people who make up fantastic stories to bolster their own image." As purported evidence, Bruce asserted that Clinton had said her daughter, Chelsea Clinton, was "at the World Trade Center on September 11th." In fact, Hillary Clinton made no such claim.

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During the April 7 edition of Fox News' America's Election HQ, radio host Tammy Bruce joined the growing list of media figures who have purported to diagnose Sen. Hillary Clinton with a mental disorder, asserting of Clinton, "Well, there's an actual psychiatric term called mythomania, and it's part of a larger psychiatric scheme of people who make up fantastic stories to bolster their own image." As supposed evidence of Clinton "literally making up things out of whole cloth," Bruce claimed that Clinton had discussed "Chelsea being at the World Trade Center on September 11th." In fact, Hillary Clinton did not claim that her daughter, Chelsea Clinton, was "at the World Trade Center on September 11th"; rather, as Media Matters for America has documented, Hillary Clinton said that her daughter had "gone, what she thought would be just a great jog. She was going to go down to Battery Park, she was going to go around the towers. She went to get a cup of coffee and -- and that's when the plane hit."

As Media Matters noted, in a February 25 National Review Online blog post, CNBC host Lawrence Kudlow wrote, "Now I'm no psychiatrist, far from it, but I think a simple answer is that Senator Clinton could be depressed." In a February 27 New York Timescolumn, Maureen Dowd wrote that Clinton "has turned into Sybil," an apparent reference to a book and movie about a woman who developed multiple personality disorder after being severely abused as a child. On the February 26 edition of CNN's The Situation Room, commentator Jack Cafferty claimed Clinton "[r]esembl[ed] someone with multiple personality disorder." And on the February 25 edition of MSNBC's Hardball, Chicago Tribune reporter Jill Zuckman asserted that Clinton's behavior "comes across as a little schizophrenic." As Media Mattersfurtherdocumented, in her book The Extreme Makeover of Hillary (Rodham) Clinton (Regnery Publishing, 2007), Republican strategist Bay Buchanan suggested that Clinton may have a disorder "involving narcissistic personality style," and was quoted in an article about the book as saying, "[W]e are talking about a clinical condition that could make her [Clinton] dangerously ill-suited to become President and Commander in Chief."

Additionally, as Media Mattersdocumented in 2004, following a speech in which former Vice President Al Gore called for the resignation of six top Bush administration officials, pundits claimed that Gore "has gone off his lithium again"; that "half the country thinks he's a mental patient"; that he "is insane" and "needs medication"; and that "if he is already on medication, his doctors need to adjust it or change it entirely."

From the April 7 edition of Fox News' America's Election HQ:

MEGYN KELLY (anchor): What do you think, Tammy? Are your listeners still fired up about sniper-gate, as we've come to refer to it here on this program? I mean, do they still think that's something worth --

BRUCE: Well --

KELLY -- considering?

BRUCE: Yes. Well, there's an actual psychiatric term called mythomania, and it's part of a larger psychiatric scheme of people who make up fantastic stories to bolster their own image. When you look at Chelsea being at the World Trade Center on September 11th, or her being named after Edmund Hillary, or now the Bosnia situation, you see a pattern of this woman literally making up things out of whole cloth.

But when you look at polls about trusting politicians, you got to keep in mind -- people are considering, it's about politicians. It's not like whether or not you trust a member of your family. It's a different kind of standard.

And in this instance, it's a matter of whether or not you're dealing with a decent person who you can trust in a larger context.

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